Tag: Dansby Swanson

This was a trade Squids just had to make. I really wouldn’t feel good about contending with Joe Panik as my only 2B. Dee Gordon is a little sketchy in our format because he offers no power, but neither does Panik. At least Dee gets on base pretty good and racks up steals, which aren’t really valuable but are better than nothing. Gordon always finishes among the top 2B scorers even if it isn’t always in game changing fashion. I wouldn’t be surprised if Panik gets dumped back to auction now.

Speaking of auction. Is Adam Jones kept at $39? I’m not sure. Gordon will be able to play CF too and while he won’t hit the homers Jones will, they’re roughly the same guy in our scoring when all is said and done.

Either way, this helps Squids at minimal cost. It gives him a relatively inexpensive, useful player that offers some options and flexibility. For LB, I assume this was a salary dump. So good for him too for turning a presumed cut into some future value. Maybe next year he can join the dark side and sell the pick for auction budget.

Hustle’s Toxic $.02

Overall this trade was pretty fine for both teams. I like it slightly more for Long Ball here. Gordon, like Brinson, has to be one of the most traded players in Dynasty Grinders history ( Jesus Sucre and Brian Shaw not counted). I think Gordon was likely headed back to the auction, so getting a 2nd round pick is a good haul for a cut. For Squids, supplanting Paniks production seems like a good idea at this point, and Gordon is a decent option. I think if he would have held out until auction he could have got comparable production at 2b, but maybe not. It’s hard to fault him for wanting to be prepared at each position before the auction.

So after an offseason of quite, Squids picked up Dee and Did in one afternoon. That’s 3 Ds. D-Von, get tables.

Anyway I like this trade for Squids more than the first. This reminds me of the Ferns deal with Bailey earlier offseason where he bought Mannea for 20. Buying an $8 Didi for $15 is basically like paying $23 at auction for Didi, which I don’t think would be crazy if you didn’t have a SS. The upside is that squids only has to pay $10 for him next year, especially with greed sponge Gary Sanchez on his roster. I don’t hate the trade for Jordan, I think it was a natural consequence of the Corey Seager deal which I did not like for Jordan. In fact, if Dejong does what he did last year, there’s no way Jordan is going to miss Didi at all. $15 buys you a better need at auction, so I get it.

Andrew’s thoughts: It’s tough writing trade reviews sometimes because, as an owner, I occasionally have information and context to a trade or a player’s asking price behind closed doors that doesn’t really seem fair to publicize. That is true in this case. So I’ll be careful not to share how the information that I have influences my perspective of this trade. Let’s just say that I know what the asking price was for Bryce Harper, like, yesterday, and move on.

First of all, both these players are really good and quite valuable. I love Bryce and would give up essentially my entire team for him, $111 in 2017 be damned. I also love Greinke and at $78, he’s priced very well. He’s had a slow start to the season, but he truly is an ace of staff — and on the Oysters, joins Jake Arrieta and Max Scherzer in a horrifying trifecta of pitchers — that even at $80 next year doesn’t seem like a problem to keep.

I think my problem with this trade, as with Dusty’s first Bryce trade, is that pieces just seem to be lacking. The 1-for-1 is nice, simple, clean. And Bryce being traded three times suggests teams are scared of his salary. But I really don’t understand how you trade a transcendent, once in a lifetime talent twice and each time only get back a single pitcher. And you guys know how I feel about the value of pitchers. I just really feel like value is being left on the table.

I mean, Greinke is awesome and you could argue the top 8-10 pitchers or so make a greater difference to a team’s success than the top 3-4 hitters do. But how does Dusty not pry Dansby Swanson from the Squids here? How does he not get Hunter Renfroe and Carson Fulmer thrown in? How does he not get some draft pick conpensation? Is it that unreasonable to also get Mark Trumbo or Kyle Seager back? Something else?!

Truthfully, I don’t hate the deal for either side and both teams may come out feeling alright. I just think, as Dusty does pretty regularly, the haste to get a flashy deal done quickly got in the way of sapping the most possible value out of his asset. And who knows, a week or two from now if Dusty’s great-on-paper squad keeps underperforming, maybe he’ll turn around and start unloading Arrieta, Scherzer, and even Greinke and just reshuffle the deck that way. Though this is twice now that Bryce has been traded for the bare minimum, so I would hope our stable of owners here are savvy enough to recognize that there’s a pattern here. Just wait it out, and eventually you can buy guys from the Oysters for a price that suits you best.

I don’t mean to beat on Dusty (again). I love that he can unleash those three aces on his opposition, plus deploy Kyle Hendricks and John Lackey on weeks where those guys only start once per week. But even that, I think, leads to an interesting point: how much pitching is too much, even in a format where they’re super valuable? I mean, isn’t having those five starters, plus quality arms in Collin McHugh just a big opportunity cost problem? In other words, did Dusty’s roster need Harper’s offensive production more than it needed Greinke? I think it probably did.

To date, the Oysters have been the second worst offense in the league… with Harper. Dusty’s offense is now dramatically worse. I think another trade pretty much has to happen, and at what point are you chewing into values by making a thousand moves just to end up in roughly the same spot?

I don’t know. This deal is exciting and I love the rotation Dusty’s assembled, I just feel like Squids got off light here.

Jordan’s thoughts: Andrew just wrote so beautifully. I know RMO could have gotten more. I know that Squids wasn’t getting more. Another head scratcher. I just have to shake my head and move on. There’s no reason here why Squids would say no to getting Bryce. There’s no reason Dusty should only ask for Greinke for Bryce. None. There’s been plenty of lopsided deals, but even at $111, Bryce is a value keeper piece next year. Just crazy.